News from the Library of Congress

November 9, 2000

Congress
Establishes Veterans' Oral History Project in American Folklife Center
at the Library of Congress

On Veterans' Day, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress
will launch a program to collect and preserve the personal experience
stories and oral histories of America's war veterans and make selections
available to the public over the Internet.

The Veterans' Oral History Project encourages war veterans, their families,
veterans groups, communities, and students to audio- and video-tape the
memories of veterans' time in service.

Beginning on November 11, the Center will initiate the planning phase
of the project. Guidelines to assist the public in conducting local documentation
will be developed by December. The Library will create a network of partnerships
throughout the United States to encourage affiliated organizations, community
groups, and individuals to collect these recollections and firsthand accounts.

"Collecting the oral histories of American veterans is a critical task
in preserving our history and an urgent need as we enter the 21st century.
These histories will be an invaluable resource for future generations
and will become part of the nation's vast historical record that the Library
of Congress has preserved for 200 years," said Librarian of Congress,
James H. Billington.

The Veterans' Oral History Project was authorized by enactment of Public
Law 106-380, signed into law by President Clinton on October 27. The legislation
was sponsored by Rep. Ron Kind and Rep. Amo Houghton, in the U.S. House
of representatives, and Sen. Max Cleland and Sen. Charles Hagel, in the
U.S. Senate, and received broad bipartisan support.

More than 19 million war veterans are living in the United States today
(including 3,400 from World War I and 6 million from World War II), but
almost 1,500 die each day.

"The American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress will preserve
these folk histories of our everyday war heroes from every corner of the
nation and offer selections from their stories back to the American people
over the Internet," said the Center's director, Dr. Peggy Bulger. The
American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 and placed at
the Library of Congress to preserve and present American folklife through
programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference
service, live performance, exhibition, public programs, and training.
The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established
in the Library in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic
material from the United States and around the world.

The collections include the earliest field recordings made anywhere
in the world (wax cylinder recordings of Passamaquoddy Indians in Maine
from 1890), ex-slave narratives, folk music collected by John and Alan
Lomax in the 1930s and '40s, original recordings of legends such as Woody
Guthrie and Leadbelly, the work of Zora Neale Hurston, and the documentary
record of more than 1,000 community heritage events and festivals that
were designated "Local Legacies" by members of Congress as part of the
celebration this year of the 200th anniversary of the founding of the
Library of Congress.

Further information about the Veterans' Oral History Project is available
at the American Folklife Center's Web site: www.loc.gov/folklife or at (888) 371-5848.